Indifference or dereliction?

What if – just for the sheer counterintuitive hell of it – “the government” isn’t even interested in UFOs? Or at least, not lately?

Last week, a group of researchers calling themselves the Scientific Coalition of Ufology released its potentially game-changing, 162-page analysis of a 2013 UFO event over Aquadilla, Puerto Rico. What set this incident apart from so much common dreck was the apparent source of the videotape – U.S. Customs and Border Protection, under the Department of Homeland Security. This is an impressive pedigree, maybe even a gold standard. And flightstats.com independently confirmed an insider’s contention that a Fed Ex flight was, indeed, delayed for departure by 16 minutes as the UFO, sans transponder, buzzed nearby Rafael Hernandez Airport.

Government UFO footage? Our agency? An underwater sequence too? Thermal imaging? No worries, no worries –bossman’s totally plugged in and he’s all over it, yo, like white on rice/CREDIT: fotozup.com

That last detail put the hook in Dr. Richard Haines, former research scientist with NASA-Ames and founder of the non-profit National Aviation Reporting Center on Anomalous Phenomena. Since 1999, Haines and NARCAP have assessed and published trends on the potentially catastrophic impact of unidentified aerial phenomena (UAP) on air traffic safety, at home and abroad. Given the extraordinary clarity of the Aguadilla video, coupled with the fact that the name-protected whistleblower who leaked the footage appears to be a federal employee, Haines took an arm’s-length approach when he was contacted about the images in 2013.

“Given sufficient motivation, manpower and money, one could create a very realistic hoax here,” Haines conceded in an email to De Void. “However, for a number of reasons, I don’t believe it is a hoax. It does deserve a lot more serious study for what it may tell us about small volume, generally globular (i.e., contained), dynamic, heat-emitting resources.”

Still, Haines’ main reservations weren’t over authenticity. His foremost concern was whether or not the footage involved classified material. After all, if this is what it appears to be – i.e., a single flying object, averaging 80 mph after plowing into the ocean, then splitting into two separate flying objects as it emerged from the water – it seems pretty obvious that a federal agency has documented evidence of some extraordinary technology. If it’s one of ours, is this how Uncle Sam would want to put the word out there? Via UFO researchers? Really? And if it’s stealthy hardware from, say China, would we want them to know we know?

“[Restricted access] has still not been determined by anyone as far as I know,” states Haines, “and that is one of the reasons we (NARCAP) did not proceed with any more than a cursory examination of the video long ago when we first learned of it. We wanted to (and still want to) play by the rules, so to speak, in this regard considering that it might have been classified information.”

But if Morgan Beall’s confidential source is correct, the bureaucrats just don’t give a spit.

“According to our witness,” says Beall, the Florida State MUFON director who coordinated the investigation, “Air Force intelligence kicked it back down, said ‘We don’t know what it is,’ and said to call the 800 number of a civilian research organization. Actually there are two to three witnesses, and when there didn’t appear to be any interest from the upper echelon, their attitude was, well, does that mean we’re free to talk about it? And that’s when the leaks started.

“We’ve all heard stories about eyewitnesses being threatened and told to keep quiet or else. But those are largely historical cases, and from the ‘90s onward we’re not hearing that from anybody at all. And I think that’s probably a smarter way to handle it, just deny you’re interested.”

SCU team investigator Richard Hoffman suspects the Aguadilla video trickled into the public domain as “more of a mess-up than anything else.” An IT engineer contracting with U.S. Army Materiel Command at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville, Ala., Hoffman blames the leak on a “lack of clear guidance” on what to do with UFO reports that might emanate from government agencies. Unlike a number of South American and European nations, the U.S. has had no official institutional system for processing UFO data since 1970. “Whether it was passed up the chain of command or if it just stayed with Customs, I don’t know,” he says. “My concern is that someone with DHS is going to spank someone from Customs for letting it get out there.”

A student of the phenomena since he was a teenager growing up in Ohio, Hoffman says he’s been waiting a lifetime for evidence of this caliber to emerge. He once interviewed an Air Force pilot who told him he shot gun-camera footage in pursuit of a UFO, only to have it confiscated and vanish down a black hole. Now, it’s as if Customs and Border Protection just delivered the goods on a silver platter.

“I’m almost doing pole vaults, I’m so excited about it,” says Hoffman. “There’s never been a single case that’s been so thoroughly studied. In two and a half minutes, we have an object that breaks two laws of physics. And we’ve got infrared video, we’ve got radar, we’ve got the kind of technology and built-in metrics you just can’t get from eyewitnesses alone. We’ve done the science, we’ve done the math. We’ve posted it, and we want more input.”

So did Customs screw up? Or DHS? Or could it be that administrators at either agency really don’t care that on the evening of April 25, 2013, a state-of-the-art airborne camera did its job and gathered evidence of a flying machine demonstrating unprecedented performance capabilities?

I do NOT believe the UFO EVER ENTERED THE WATER OR SPLIT IN TWO! Heres why. THERE WEWE ALWAYS TWO UFO’s. It’s just that ONE OF THEM REMAINED CLOAKED until at the very end of the video! The UFO that was VISIBLE theoughout the video VERY BRIEFLY CLOAKED ITSELF to make us THINK it entered the water! The BASIS of this belief is a principle called Occam’ Razor. This states that “the devil you know” is MORE LIKELY than “the devil you don’t know. We KNOW that you can cloak objects to render them invisable. We SALREADY HAVE VERY RUDIMENTERY TECHNOLOGY TO DO THIS!

@Robert,
Hi Robert. There’s just too much testimonial evidence out there (way too numerous to list here) pointing to the existence of an above-top-secret, need-to-know echelon of UAP/ET research & material…for me to dismiss the notion. From Edgar Mitchell to Charles Halt to Gordon Cooper to FAA flight controllers whose radar tapes were confiscated…the credible accounts are everywhere.
I think one reason the accounts of being ordered to ‘hush-up’ or ‘forget it’ are historical is because they came from people who are now retired, want to get their experiences on record, and no longer fear the consequences.
When they retire, let’s see what we hear (for example) from the F-16 pilots who shadowed the huge triangular and pentagonal crafts all around Stephensville…and so on.
As for the military folks who told you they don’t talk about UAP’s only because of the public stigma it would incur, ask them (if they are Air Force) why they are still required to sign a non-diclosure form, or make a non-disclosure oath, regarding the subject.

@freeman69,
IANAL, but I believe Puerto Ricos airport is under FAA jurisdiction (they had to get FAA permission to ‘privatize’ it. They could only ‘concessionize’ it, sales of commercial airports are not allowed) ). I’ll bet the FAA could get anything they wanted from the control tower. ATC is contracted worldwide, and accident investigators have no problem getting data. That delayed Fed Ex flight had to be logged somewhere. FOIA the FAA for the info. Forget DHS and USCBP.
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See, I know that most people disagree with the use of ex post facto laws, but I think that there may be a few, albeit rare, times when ex post facto laws should be applied, and I think that this example of government officials, and private corporations, making a mockery of The FOIA is one of those situations. This is just wrong, and should be punished.

We automatically assume that FOIA is the way to go, and it’s automatically game over when private companies are involved. I’m thinking of those tower logs.
Even though a company isn’t obligated to respond, perhaps an alternative approach might find them more responsive? In exceptional circumstances, if privacy and security aren’t compromised, maybe a company would respond to a request from a political representative, or a reporter?

There are a lot of players who are culpable here, not just Customs Border Protection (CBP). According to the witness, the evidence was passed to Air Force Intelligence who offered no explanation to CBP and instead provided referrals to other Agencies. Radar data was requested from the 84th RADES Group. One other unverified source posted that the Video was sent to Quantico, Virginia. When we tried a FOIA to get the tower logs through the FAA who directed us to a private company in Tennessee (Robinson Aviation). They would not respond to our requests for information. We sought more clarity from L-3 about their camera and got silence to the questions we posed to them. In talking with many others, this video has been passed around and looked at by others with much interest, but silence overall. We were informed today that we may be getting a statement from the CBP Public Affairs Officer who seemed to know nothing about the incident. I have to laugh at Conspiracy comments that suggest it was faked and someone wants to see how quickly it is dissiminated. I guess we love to fantasize that the government matches those TV shows and movies in efficiency and effectiveness.

Bill P, I agree with your last paragraph. Scientific breakthroughs such as the atomic bomb, development of jet aircraft, rockets, etc., occur at multiple locations throughout the world at about the same time. It’s not like we were handed those technologies. They all slowly evolve. Like you, I won’t say it’s impossible to have somehow technology been sneakily given to us but I find that close to zero for a possibility.

Now I don’t think there is a compartmentalized group in the government that keeps an eye on the UFO phenomenon and has an active database on the phenomenon. I will say that it would be much easier to convince me that I’m wrong on this count than the view of “gifted technologies.” I guess I’m a little more pessimistic in my view of the government and UFOs. I have studied the history since WW-II and I have seen no clear hand-me-down of information. I think as Billy often says, it is a “Big Taboo” that no one wants to even think about let alone discuss. I’ve talked to many military individuals who have seen UFOs in the service and they rarely report them because of the negative societal view of the topic rather than because someone told them to hush up. And the times that people have been told to hush up, I think is because their superior didn’t want the topic/issue affecting his standing. As a society, the concept of something more intelligent than us being able to get here puts a damper on one’s view of our importance and our being the center of everything. As Sergeant Schultz used to say on the TV series Hogan’s Heroes, “I see nothing, I hear nothing, I know nothing.”

There’s just too much historical documentary and testimonial evidence contradicting it to hypothesize that USAF intelligence ‘kicked it back down’ because they weren’t interested. Robert Hastings’s research has clearly demonstrated that there’s a ‘public face’ concerning the UAP’s – Blue Book,etc. – and a highly classified, compartmentalized face (S.A.P.s) that even command grade officers are excluded from.
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One of the benefits of silence, misdirection and denial… is that it keeps outside but interested parties spinning in whirlpools of speculation and suspicion.
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Is there a scintilla of evidence in the past decade’s worth of relevant scientific journals that a technology capable of producing the effects demonstrated by this object is in any stage of research or development?
I might be wrong, but I recall that many of the more significant scientific breakthroughs during the past century did not happen in a single lab, but were being worked on simultaneously by researchers in different places…sometimes on different continents. The acclaim, the prize, merely went to those who published first.
In this light, I find it difficult (not impossible, but difficult) to give much credence to the notion that our ‘gummint, or any ‘gummint, has such a technology extant. I think we would’ve seen hints (leaks) by now.

Clearly it will help when/if the whistleblower steps forward. At this point, the only opinions worth listening to are those informed by the data in the report, which is meticulous and formidable. That’s the only thing SCU is asking — read the report.

You can quickly run fall into a rabbit hole of conspiracy thinking with this case. They don’t care because they know what it is, whatever it is. HS faked and leaked it to see how quickly it dissimulated. Everything is of equal weight in the great taboo vacuum.